We're Home!

And this is what I did within my first hour of crawling out of the van:
With my past record, this will look like a little red X to you. But at the time of publishing it looked like an entire carton of eggs knocked off a counter and cracked all over the floor. I laughed so hard! What a way to say "vacation has ended!"

We had a blast. The shopping on our first morning was not the sweet skip through the flowers I was anticipating, but it just made the surprise for the kids all the sweeter. We could NOT find anything we were looking for on Monday. Nothing! We finally broke down and bought the boys some shoes at Penneys, but they weren't first picks for us (the boys loved 'em.) I got my "nice bra" from Victoria Secret. I've always wanted a "good" bra and was determined to get one. By the time we reached that end of the mall, Chris was done shopping. He said it was fine as long as I could get it in 5 minutes or less. I did it. Wish I hadn't. We were all near tears by 3:00. That's when we headed to Branson. The boys slowly recognized that we weren't heading home and asked what was up. Chris told them that since we couldn't find what we needed in the city, we were going to hit some stores in another town. They didn't even grumble. We hit Branson and told them we were going to try just a few more shoes stores.....you could feel the discontent, but they still didn't grumble. I said loudly "Honey, these kids sure have been incredible today, don't you think? Just how awesome do you think they've been?" Chris said (at the exact moment that he pulled up to our hotel room,) "Awesome enough to spend the night at a water park."

Oh, their faces. It was priceless. Confusion, quickly followed by shock, followed by glee. Completely worth it. And it really was a blast. If you ever want a cool getaway, $65.00 gets you a nice room for a family of 6 and entrance into an indoor waterpark. Plus, incredible shopping. We hit the Branson stores on Tuesday and found everything that we were looking for on Monday. Except the carseat. Sarah is outgrowing her infant seat. That'll have to wait for another day, apparently.

Since we spent so much longer than planned while shopping on Monday, Chris surprised us all with a 2nd night at the Grand Country Inn Tuesday night. We got back Wednesday morning so I could spill eggs.

Now, here's the scoop: I have been flailing around as a housewife and homeschool mom, trying to figure out how to get ahead of the game. Or get my head in the game? I received my first copy of No Greater Joy in the mail the day before I left and had it to read in the car. It was amazingly refreshing. It just reminded me to stop complicating things and to focus. I'm a naturally lazy mom and try to avoid overloading myself, but I so often fail to realize that just a small amount of effort up front actually saves me a lot of drawn out effort later on. I just need to set aside my distractions and do this stuff "on purpose." So, for the rest of Lent, I am going to avoid the computer as much as possible. I'm still in the midst of a bible study via email, so I'm not dropping off the face of the earth. But I'm going to take a blog hiatus until then. Well, mostly until then...I did start a blog post that I never finished and I'm going to post it next, but after that, a short break.

Of course, it can't be a total break because Jennie C. is about to have a baby and I have got to meet this little guy!

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